Harrow the Ninth

Gideon Nav is the deuteragonist and narrator of Harrow the Ninth, and the protagonist of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon is roughly 18 in Gideon and 19 in Harrow. Gideon is a foundling of the Ninth House and finds herself as an indentured servant, unable to leave the House’s service. Gideon is brash, often acts before thinking, and prone to using humor as a coping mechanism. She is not religious, despite growing up in the deeply religious Ninth House, and has little respect for authority with few exceptions. Gideon is deeply attached to her two-hander, which, unbeknownst to her, belonged to her mother, Commander Wake. Gideon’s use of the two-hander bucks cavalier conventions, which state that she must fight with a rapier and an off-hand of her choice. Gideon is a prodigy with martial fighting and has devoted her life to the art; she feels that she isn’t good for anything else.

Gideon and Harrow have a deeply complex relationship. They have always been at odds, often to the point of fighting and drawing blood. In Gideon, Gideon tries to escape the Ninth House to join the Cohort; Harrow foils her plan and forces Gideon to pose as her cavalier. Throughout the first book, Harrow manipulates and commands Gideon, though Gideon often ignores her orders and challenges her authority. The two harbor deep, romantic feelings for one another that often manifest in dysfunctional or poorly communicated ways. Gideon is unable to take direct action for much of Harrow, and her tone is mostly serious and formal until she enters the narrative directly, after which it shifts more toward Gideon’s casual, irreverent way of speaking.

Toward the end of Harrow, Gideon gains direct control of Harrow’s body. Gideon is immediately thrust, unprepared, into the climactic action of the story; she must navigate the world in a body very different from her own, witness the unfolding of a plot that she knows nothing about, and deal, very abruptly, with her Lost Childhood and her parental grief. Gideon learns the identities of both of her parents—that she is literally the child of God and one of his fiercest enemies and was created specifically to be sacrificed for a conspiracy. Gideon barely has time to process this knowledge; she lashes out, but the chaos of the situation prevents her from being able to truly navigate and cope with her emotions about these revelations.

The end of the book leaves Gideon’s fate a mystery, with Harrow choosing to try and regain control of her body and the world collapsing around Gideon.

Ianthe Tridentarius is Harrow’s only ally in Harrow and a returning antagonist from Gideon the Ninth. Ianthe is 22 in Harrow. She has a twin sister, Coronabeth Tridentarius, who is missing after the events of Gideon and presumed dead. Ianthe refuses to believe Coronabeth is dead, demonstrating the theme of Coping With Grief through her denial.

Ianthe is arrogant, prideful, and lavish, which is reflected in her baroque apartments and ostentatious clothing aboard the Mithraeum. Ianthe murdered her cavalier, Naberius Tern, in cold blood in Gideon in order to become a Lyctor before anybody else. Ianthe is a ruthless genius with her own machinations. She helps Harrow not out of a sense of empathy, but because Ianthe wishes to use her for her own schemes down the road, which are revealed in later novels.

Harrow and Ianthe’s relationship trends toward romantic. Ianthe repeatedly questions Harrow’s mental health even as she aids her and engages in intimate activities with her. Harrow begins to take comfort in Ianthe’s presence as she is haunted by Cytherea’s possessed corpse and repeatedly attacked by Duty, and eventually, she is only able to rest in Ianthe’s bed.

Ianthe experiences pain from the rejection of Naberius in her soul due to his violent and nonconsensual death. Ianthe also struggles with her right arm, which was ripped off by Cytherea the First and was replaced by a donor-matched arm. The arm elicits intense body dysphoria in Ianthe, and Naberius’s soul rejects it. Ianthe’s experience with dysmorphia only ends when Harrow lovingly crafts her a new arm from her own skeletal material.

At the end of the book, Ianthe swears loyalty to John once he pieces himself back together after the assassination attempt. She is last seen rescuing John from the stoma.

Commander Wake was the leader of the Blood of Eden rebels and rallied the group 25 years ago. Wake was part of the Dios Apate, Major conspiracy to kill John, the Emperor, and destroy the Nine Houses. Roughly 20 years ago, Wake impregnated herself with John’s stolen genetic material and carried a baby to term, intending to use the child to break John’s locks on the Locked Tomb. Gideon the First, the Saint of Duty, shot Wake down over the Ninth House, where she crash-landed and died shortly after the child was born. The baby, who was named Gideon after Wake’s dying word, survived and grew up in the Ninth House.

Furious in death, Wake became a revenant attached to her two-hander, which Gideon inherited. Wake uses her connection with the two-hander to possess Harrow’s body to use in her revenge plot against John. Wake’s convictions, alongside her lengthy codename, shed light on her personality. “Awake, Remembrance of These Valiant Dead” is a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V. On the eve of war between England and France, the Bishop of Ely declares:

Awake remembrance of these valiant dead

And with your puissant arm renew their feats:

You are their heir; you sit upon their throne;

The blood and courage that renowned them

Runs in your veins […]. (Act I, Scene 2)

Wake views the Blood of Eden as the heir who should sit upon the proverbial throne of humanity. “Awake Remembrance” is a rallying cry synecdoche for a group of people deemed the proper inheritors of humanity. "Kia Hua Ko Te Pai" is a line from the national anthem of Aotearoa (New Zealand), E Ihowā Atua. The line roughly means “Let goodness flourish,” another optimistic gesture toward a peaceful future for non-necromantic humanity. “Snap Back to Reality” is a reference to rapper Eminem’s popular song “Lose Yourself,” reflecting a sense of humor juxtaposed against the stoic nature of the first two parts of her codename. This suggests an irreverent sense of humor like her daughter’s.

Wake is present in several forms throughout the book, though all of her actions are driven by her quest for revenge against John. As the Sleeper, she attacks the spirits in Harrow’s self-made pocket dimension, as well as Harrow herself. As a revenant, she possesses Cytherea’s corpse and uses it to try and kill Duty. Later, when she comes across Gideon-as-Harrow being attacked and sees Harrow’s golden eyes (Gideon’s), she wordlessly rescues Gideon. John eventually subdues and interrogates her, which leads to the revelation of the conspiracy plot; however, Pyrrha—in Duty’s body—shoots the possessed Cytherea during the conversation, ejecting Wake’s spirit.

John Gaius is the inciting actor of the central conflict in the Locked Tomb universe and the divine head of the Nine Houses empire. After the Resurrection 10,000 years ago, John spent his time ensuring his Houses flourished and hunting down and subjugating the other remnants of humanity not present when the Resurrection occurred.

John is a worn down, haggard man who dresses plainly and is often disheveled. The only marker of his divinity is his pitch-black eyes, which have a thin white ring. John believes he is God, and the Nine Houses treat him as such. Despite this, he displays an acute sense of humanity aboard the Mithraeum, which shocks Harrow. John challenges Harrow’s fervent religiosity and makes her question the nature of devotion, divinity, and what should be considered sacred. John openly engages in sexual behavior with the other elder Lyctors, drinks tea with Harrow, and makes jokes attuned to 21st-century internet culture that make little sense to Harrow.

Harrow begins to see John as a father figure after she discusses her Lost Childhood with him. John offers to take her burden of guilt unto himself, which paints him as a benevolent paternal figure. Later, it’s revealed that John is Gideon’s biological father, though she was conceived without his knowledge. When he meets Gideon, he greets her with a lighthearted joke despite the high tension of the situation, which implies that some of Gideon’s taste for ill-timed humor comes from him. It is also revealed that John kept secrets and lied to his Lyctors about the necessity of consuming their cavaliers’ souls. This shows that John is not the affable, unthreatening man he appears to be. Mercy and Augustine, two of the three remaining original Lyctors, try to kill John toward the end of the book as part of a conspiracy that emerged in response to John’s lies. Mercy seems to succeed in killing him, but John’s godly levels of power make him nigh immortal; after he revives, he kills Mercy and demands loyalty from everyone else, revealing a more ruthless side of his personality than he had previously shown.

John is last seen being rescued by Ianthe, narrowly avoiding falling into the stoma. His whereabouts are left unclear.

The Body is the woman in the Locked Tomb, also referred to as “A.L.” by the elder Lyctors. John tenderly refers to her as Annabel Lee from the Edgar Allan Poe poem, while Augustine and Mercy derisively call her Alecto, a mythological Greek harbinger of destruction. She was the first person Resurrected by John and became his cavalier. The Body is a constant companion/hallucination of Harrow’s; she follows Harrow everywhere and is most often present in the most challenging parts of Harrow’s life. Harrow loves the Body intensely and harbors sexual and romantic feelings for the woman that haunts her. This character reappears in the third book in the series, Nona the Ninth, and is the titular character of the fourth and final book, Alecto the Ninth.

Mercymorn is one of the original Lyctors and, alongside her cavalier Cristabel Oct, formed the Eighth House. Mercy specialized in medicine in life and is the premier flesh-based necromancer, able to manipulate organic matter on a whim.

Mercy is secretive, exasperated easily, and short with the younger Lyctors. Her namesake as the Saint of Joy is a sardonic joke. Mercy acts as Harrow’s keeper on the Mithraeum. Mercy aids Harrow in Lyctorhood, though she is not particularly keen to be a mentor and is more concerned with her own affairs. Mercy, alongside Augustine, concocted the Dios Apate, Major conspiracy to kill John and end the Houses. The conspiracy was botched when Wake was shot down, but it was revived when Mercy and Augustine reconvened on the Mithraeum.

Mercy has a conflicted opinion about her late cavalier, Cristabel; she reacts intensely when Cristabel’s name is mentioned, though she does not explain why, which hints at the complexity and depth of her grief over Cristabel’s loss. In the climactic encounter, she forces John to say he loved Cristabel, which further proves the extent of her fixation on her late cavalier. Mercy then assassinates John, who revives and murders her.

Augustine is one of the original Lyctors. He formed the Fifth House with his brother and cavalier, Alfred Quinque. Augustine is the pre-eminent soul-based necromancer in the Nine Houses and displays a mastery of the River and its elements. Along with Mercy, Augustine began the Dios Apate, Major conspiracy.

Augustine is often easygoing and flippant, which Ianthe admires. Unlike Mercy, he displays the qualities of his saintly virtue. He favors Ianthe over Harrow, though he pushes her relentlessly, merciless about her struggles with her donor-made arm. Augustine agrees to help Ianthe and Harrow with their conspiracy to kill Duty, though he does so to further his own plans against John rather than a true desire to help the girls. He and Mercy clash in many ways, despite their shared goal. They argue and lash out at each other, and Augustine openly compliments Cristabel in stark contrast to Mercy’s intense reaction to her. Despite this, Augustine and Mercy share a bond of complicated intimacy due to their many years as Lyctors and co-conspirators; when they distract John for Harrow and Ianthe, they do so by becoming physically intimate with each other, then with John.

Augustine is wholly devoted to his plan to kill John and destroy the Nine Houses, which builds the theme of Religion and Cycles of Violence. Augustine refuses to die by suicide after Mercy supposedly assassinates John; he believes that it is their duty to ensure the end of necromancy, destroy the Resurrection Beasts, and relocate the survivors. He refuses to swear loyalty to John after John revives and kills Mercy, unwilling to feign loyalty any longer. He throws the Mithraeum into the River in a last-ditch attempt to accomplish his goals, but because Ianthe rescues John at the last minute, he falls into the stoma alone.

Gideon the First, also called the Saint of Duty (or “Duty”), is the first of the original Lyctors and formed the Fifth House with his best friend and cavalier, Pyrrha Dve. Like Harrow, Duty managed to compartmentalize Pyrrha and never fully devour her soul. As a result, Duty displays an aptitude for martial weapons and never demonstrates necromantic capacity outside of negating Harrow’s necromantic protections, quite unlike his fellow Lyctors.

Duty is brief, taciturn, and barely speaks. Like Harrow, his fractured state with Pyrrha often leaves him dazed and confused as to what he is doing and why. Due to her inability to cope with the grief of Gideon’s death, Harrow programs her brain to hear his name as “Ortus,” which causes several other characters to question her mental health. Duty also tries to kill Harrow repeatedly throughout the book; as John’s most genuinely loyal Lyctor, Duty takes it upon himself to eliminate Harrow once he deems her a threat. Duty also killed Wake, positioning him as the only one of the three original Lyctors not involved in the conspiracy against John.

When Duty’s soul is devoured by the Resurrection Beast, Pyrrha takes over his body and makes it her own. Pyrrha shares many of Gideon Nav’s qualities: She is brash and filled with swaggering bravado. Pyrrha confesses that she began an intense affair with Wake (using Duty’s body) before Gideon Nav was born and mistakenly believed that Gideon Nav was her own child. This provides context to an earlier scene where Harrow witnessed Duty kissing Cytherea’s corpse; it is implied that at the time, Pyrrha was in control of the body, though it is unclear whether she knew Wake’s spirit was possessing the corpse.

Though her time with Gideon is brief, Pyrrha acts as Gideon’s first true parental figure. She provides Gideon with the important context of her history, which Gideon has never had before due to her Lost Childhood. As they face a seemingly hopeless situation, Pyrrha takes charge, narrowing down their options and laying them out for Gideon. She and Gideon both fall into the River in their attempt at escape; Pyrrha is then seen in the Epilogue, though how she got there is left unclear.

Ortus Nigenad was Harrow’s original, legal cavalier by House laws in Gideon the Ninth. Ortus was 33 when he died: Ortus and his mother were assassinated when they attempted to take a shuttle originally meant to illegally smuggle Gideon Nav off the planet. The explosion was meant for Gideon.

Ortus is a foil to Gideon. He is soft, thoughtful, and afraid of physical violence and fighting. He does not possess the qualities of a capable cavalier, though he cares deeply about Harrow. In Harrow, the real Ortus is only ever seen in Harrow’s false memories, as he exists in the pocket dimension she created in the River. In the false Canaan House, Ortus spends much of his time working on the Noniad, an epic poem about the Ninth House’s best cavalier and an allusion to the Greek epic the Iliad. As he did not fulfill his duty as her cavalier in life, Ortus uses Harrow’s pocket dimension as a chance to redeem himself. He cares for Harrow and steps into the role of a responsible adult. He openly acknowledges Harrow’s Lost Childhood and helps her navigate her grief over Gideon’s death, as Harrow never learned to cope with loss on her own.

Ortus proves himself in the fight against the Sleeper with the other spirits in the pocket dimension. His poetry helps summon the legendary Matthias Nonius, which is the final piece they need to turn the tide of battle.

Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect were the Sixth House necromancer and cavalier in Gideon. Palamedes used his own body as a bomb to kill Cytherea while Camilla fought side by side with Gideon and Harrow against the Lyctor. After the events of Gideon, Camilla escaped Canaan House with the help of Blood of Eden and salvaged the fragments of Palamedes’s skull, which he attached his soul to in order to avoid total death.

Palamedes is an analytical, studious mind who favors dry humor. He is the archetypal trope of the bookworm scholar, so intelligent that even Harrow acknowledges his brilliance. Camilla, by contrast, is a quiet cavalier who fights furiously with non-traditional knives. Camilla tracks down Harrow in order to ensure that Palamedes’s plans to attach his soul to his bones worked; this allows him to be brought back in the Epilogue, though he shares Camilla’s body. In Harrow, Palamedes is key to Harrow’s understanding of the River, pocket dimensions, and the River’s malleable laws. Palamedes and Camilla play small but significant roles in Harrow, but they are heavily present in Nona the Ninth.

Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn were the Fifth House candidate necromancer and cavalier in Canaan House. They were married, despite conventions banning marriage between cavaliers and necromancers. Abigail and Magnus fulfilled parental roles at Canaan House as the only people present, barring Cytherea, who were past their early twenties. They were the first to die at Canaan House.

Abigail and Magnus’s caring parental roles continue in Harrow as they are the first to realize what is happening in Harrow’s pocket dimension in the River. Abigail, a highly respected spirit magician, helps Harrow defeat the Sleeper. The couple is key in helping Harrow work through her grief and guilt over Gideon’s death; Magnus, in particular, talks Harrow through accepting Gideon’s loss and facing her grief.

Judith Deuteros and Martas Dyas were the Second House candidate necromancer and cavalier at Canaan House. The two fulfill typical military-character archetypes: They are disciplined, take charge, and escalate everything to the level of military planning and brute force. Dyas helps Harrow and the other spirits defeat the Sleeper while Deuteros is taken in by Blood of Eden forces alongside Coronabeth and Camilla.

Dulcinea Septimus and Protesilaus Ebdoma are the Seventh House candidate necromancer and cavalier at Canaan House. The two were killed by Cytherea the First in orbit before they ever set foot on Canaan House in Gideon. Because Cytherea founded the Seventh House with Loveday Septimus, she used her passing resemblance to Cytherea to hide amongst the candidates. Dulcinea, like Cytherea, had a hereditary cancer that made her an extremely powerful necromancer.

Dulcinea, unlike the woman who posed as her, is tender and friendly toward Harrow. Protesilaus, unlike the puppet Cytherea made of his body, is gregarious, an incredibly good fighter, and just as learned in poetry as Ortus. Dulcinea is the one who reveals to Harrow that Gideon is controlling her body toward the end of the book, allowing Harrow to make an informed decision about their fates.